Wailuku’s Wehiwa Aloy Is Ready for His Shot at Big-Time Baseball
Aloy was tapped as a first-round draft pick by the Baltimore Orioles in July.
As kids on Maui, Wehiwa Aloy and his younger brother, Kuhio, used to watch a lot of Southeastern Conference baseball on TV. “A lot,” Wehiwa says. “Vanderbilt, Arkansas, all those teams.” While both were talented Little League sluggers, they could only dream of playing in the SEC from their Wailuku living room.
Fast forward a decade or so, and the Aloy brothers didn’t just play in the SEC (they were teammates last year at the University of Arkansas), they wildly exceeded their dream.
Wehiwa won this year’s prestigious Golden Spikes Award, given to the top amateur baseball player in the nation. He also was named SEC player of the year. Then in July, the Baltimore Orioles tapped him as a first-round draft pick, sending him closer to playing big-time pro baseball.
Kuhio isn’t far behind. Like his brother, he was named first-team All-SEC last season. And over the summer, he was crowned champion of the Cape Cod Baseball League Home Run Derby, blasting home run after home run at the high-profile collegiate event. An MLB career seems a good bet for him too.
So how did the Aloy brothers get here?
SEE ALSO: The Path to Pro
Genetics, in part. Their father, Jamie Aloy, was a standout baseball player for UH and was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in 1999. But even with baseball in their blood, nothing about sports is guaranteed. Wehiwa showed promise as Baldwin High School’s star shortstop, but the Aloys didn’t have the money to send him all over the country to be seen by coaches and scouts.
“We traveled some with Wehiwa, but it was minimal,” Jamie says. “Financially and geographically, it’s not beneficial for us to be living in Hawai‘i if our kids dream about being professional athletes. But we weren’t chasing anything. We were just providing the opportunity for our sons to have some type of vision of where they could play.”
With limited exposure, Wehiwa’s only offer came by way of Sacramento State, where he went for a year before transferring to Arkansas. Kuhio spent his freshman year at BYU before joining his brother and the Razorbacks.
Yet what the Aloys instilled in their sons has proven invaluable. They prioritized the importance of being good people—humble, respectful, family-oriented and devout to their faith (they are Mormon). Learning from his own days in sports, Jamie also taught them to accept failure.
“There’s so much emphasis on winning that kids these days don’t know how to lose,” he says. “That’s one of the main lessons we taught them, to keep pursuing things when they lose … to look at the bigger picture.” And their most recent college loss was a heartbreaking one, with Arkansas falling by just one run to eventual national champion LSU in the semifinals of the 2025 College World Series.
Wehiwa credits his upbringing for his steady temperament, perspective and success. “Being culturally raised in Hawai‘i helps a lot,” he says. “We grew up super close to family, and I’m thankful for that.”
Now, looking ahead to proving himself in the minors and moving up to the majors, Wehiwa says he’s just “going from there, going through the ranks and just playing.”
Jamie, meanwhile, can’t help but reminisce about the days his young sons would spend watching college baseball on TV. “They’re living their dreams now, and the thing I know is that they never gave up, and as parents, we never gave up on them.”
